One Thousand Paper Cranes
by NobleCaliber
Summary: According to Japanese culture, if you receive 1,000 paper cranes, you get to make a wish. It takes nine hundred and seventy two paper cranes for her to realize what she is truly going to wish for. And on the thousanth, she does. Good thing he'll grant it.


A/N: Alright. Its IPS fic time.

Why? Because it eases the pain that only cancellation can bring. And because how could you not ship it?

I've never tried my hand with these two, so it micht be a bit OOC.

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Paper cranes.

He gives them to her all the time. Practically every other day. He believes she throws them away, however, this is not the case. She carefully flattens them and tucks them safely into her back pocket.

She has a large drawer filled with the damn things at home. Dozens of colors, a handful of sizes. An unfolded sheet sits in the bottom of the drawer and every time he hands her another parchment bird, it recieves another tally mark.

She's not sure why she does this.

At first, she was intruiged by by the tall, beanpole marshal and his fascination for oragami. She keeps the first one and it soon becomes a habit she doesn't care to break, flatten, pocket, store.

One day, as he sets one on her keyboard, somehow managing to place it _right_ on the letter key she needs, he opens his mouth. This is no suprise, after all. Now, she hasn't been partnered with him long enough to remember to block him out.

So, and she curses herself for it, she listens.

He tells her how in the Japanese culture, if you receive one thousand paper cranes, you get to make a wish.

It seems much easier to rub a lamp. Plus, then you get three.

He informs her that this is the two hundred and seventeenth crane he has given to her, and her tally sheet comes into existance that very night.

When she'd rather not think about more important things, yet can't sleep, she'll lay in bed, wondering what it is she'll wish for when she recieves crane number one thousand. Because she prefers seeminly trivial thoughts as opposed to heavy ones most of these nights

Her theory changes, over the years. At first, she thinks she'll wish for him to just shut up sometimes. Then its for her house to herself, her mother to quit drinking, her sister to wake up and smell the nothings of her life.

One dreadful night, she's wishing for a thousand cranes, just so she can wish that her partner, the one man (And person, actually, regardless of gender) who has never let her down and never betrayed her, will barge in, manhandle a bad guy, and get her out off the hell hole she's chained up in.

After this, the wishes, they change.

She thinks she'll wish for her partnership to last, for her friendship to be undying, for Marshall to keep beng Marshall, no matter what damge she manages to cause him.

Crane number nine hundred seventy two, and she finally knows, with certainty, what she will wish for.

When crane nine seventy three rears is paper head, she casually asks if it's bad luck to tell someone what you wish on the cranes for.

His mouth twists up in thought (the way it alwas does) and she gasps, feigning shock, when he says he doesn't know. He starts to tell the story of why teling people your wishes is bad luck in various other wish-upon-a-whatever situations and she zones out.

Lucky crane number one thousand arrives one day, dropped on her desk as he gathers his things to head out for the night. He tells her this, and she pretends she doesn't know that.

She also tries to keep her heart rate steady and her breathing regular as she closes her eyes tighly and draws her lips into a thin line, her hands raised and fingers crossed to complete the theatrics as she makes her wish.

When she opens her eyes, she stares at him, wondering if her wish will come true. It's childish, she knows. But, _God_, does she want it.

When he asks her what she's wished for, she tells him it won't come true if she tells (And at this point, she wants it to come true so badly, she'll give into actual hope and leave it all riding on a thousand paper cranes).

It takes her a moment to notice he's staring back.

They say their goodbyes and before she knows it, she ends up lying alone in bed, thinking. She wishes the same thing again, crawling off the matress to open the drawer and hold some of the paper cranes. Maybe that will help.

When she can't stand it any longer, she snags her keys and rushes out the door. She swears angrily when the Probe stalls, and this seems to entice it into action. The Probes know the wrath of Mary Shannon, and they prefer not to recieve it.

She doesn't knock, just storms in.

"Mary, what-" somehow, she isn't suprised to see he's wide awake at this hour of the night. She's shocked that she isn't shocked, because sane people are out cold at this time and Marshall is a (mostly) sane man.

She drops her keys on his coffee table as he rises from the couch, pausing what she assumes to be Star Trek.

"I want to tell you what I wished for," she sounds too defiant, to stubborn for this to be a confession, even for her.

He wipes a hand over his face and through his hair (Which is considerably messy, normal given that he's pulling an all-nighter of a movie marathon). "Okay," he drawls, the word sounding much longer than it's two sylables as he speaks unsurely.

He expects her to speak. Big mistake.

Before he can even process the thought, much less the action, she's got a hold of him buy the shoulders of his black wifebeater, and she's pulled him in until he can't get any closer (Under these fully clothed circumstances, that is).

With much effort, he begins to process this, a task made much harder by the infuriating way his pulse keeps competing with it's own speed and those tourtured eyes that hant him when he closes his own.

Her eyes. They're so similar to the ones that were held hostage, to the ones that poured tears when it was him, not Spanky, to the ones when she gets _really, really _angry.

He's not sure how all this can co-habitate, especially when they mesh together to be something he can't describe.

He can, however, be almost certain that she's about to cause him immense physical harm.

Most of all, he can't contemplate how all of this has run through his mind in under a second or how he can even think about _that_ when her death grip is holding him so close to her that his chest rises and falls against hers with his quick, shallow breath.

And then, of _all things_, she _kisses_ him.

Now, at this point, he's abandoned any form of coherent thought. But could he think, he'd be hightailing it after his thoughts, which, by now, would have taken off like a bullet train.

He doesn't think about reacting (obviously), because he doesn't have to. As socked as he is- would be- his reaction to her is immidiate. Instantanious.

In the time it would have taken to blink (He assumes this takes some sort of subconsious thought), he's doing the one thing he's never been allowed to do before and he's got the only thing in the entire world that he wants.

She pulls back, hands harshly grinding the peices of his shirt she's got a hold of. "So, what? You gonna grant my wish, Doofus?"

He thinks (That pesky concept of thought) he gets an _absolutley_ in there somewhere, but he can't be sure, because he's actually still _not _thinking.

Thankfully, he doesn't need to _think_ about throwing her over his soulder and carrying her down the hall.

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